The Grady monument—­one regrets to say it—­is less fortunate as a work of art than as a deserved symbol of remembrance.  Grady not only ought to have a monument, but as one whose writings prove him to have been a man of taste, he ought to have a better one than this poor mid-Victorian thing, placed in the middle of a wide, busy street, with Fords parked all day long about its base.

Says the inscription: 

    HE NEVER SOUGHT A PUBLIC OFFICE. 
     WHEN HE DIED HE WAS LITERALLY
      LOVING A NATION INTO PEACE.

On another side of the base is chiseled a characteristic extract from one of Grady’s speeches.  This speech was made in 1899, in Boston, and one hopes that it may have been heard by the late Charles Francis Adams, who labored in Massachusetts for the cause of intersectional harmony, just as Grady worked for it in Georgia.

This hour [said Grady] little needs the loyalty that is loyal to one section and yet holds the other in enduring suspicion and estrangement.  Give us the broad and perfect loyalty that loves and trusts Georgia alike with Massachusetts—­that knows no South, no North, no East, no West; but endears with equal and patriotic love every foot of our soil, every State in our Union.

Grady could not only write and say stirring things; he could be witty.  He once spoke at a dinner of the New England Society, in New York, at which General Sherman was also present.

“Down in Georgia,” he said, “we think of General Sherman as a great general; but it seems to us he was a little careless with fire.”

Nor was Grady less brilliant as managing editor than upon the platform.  He had the kind of enterprise which made James Gordon Bennett such a dashing figure in newspaper life, and the New York “Herald” such a complete newspaper—­the kind of enterprise that charters special trains, and at all hazards gets the story it is after.  Back in the early eighties Grady was running the Atlanta “Constitution” in just that way.  If a big story “broke” in any of the territory around Atlanta, Grady would not wait upon train schedules, but would hire an engine and send his men to the scene.  Once, following a sensational murder, he learned that the Birmingham “Age-Herald” had a big story dealing with developments in the case.  He wired the “Age-Herald” offering a large price for the story.  When his offer was refused Grady knew that if he could not devise a way to get the story, Atlanta would be flooded next day with “Age-Heralds” containing the “beat” on the “Constitution.”  He at once chartered a locomotive and rushed two reporters and four telegraph operators down the line toward Birmingham.  At Aniston, Alabama, the locomotive met the train which was bringing “Age-Heralds” to Atlanta.  A copy of the paper was secured.  The “Constitution” men then broke into a telegraph office and wired the whole story in to their paper, with the result that the “Constitution” was out with it before the Birmingham papers reached Atlanta.